Picking up from http://gordon-feil-history-observations.blogspot.ca/2017/01/getting-ready-for-william-marshall.html
...
Henri le premier, king of England, died in 1135, leaving
behind his second wife, Adelicia, and his daughter, the former Empress Matilda.
She had lost her husband and had moved to Normandy where she married Geoffrey
of Anjou, known as Plantagenet on account of a sprig of broom (planta genista in Latin) he habitually
wore….sort of like Pierre Trudeau’s rose.
Geoffrey’s Angevin (meaning “from Anjou”) ancestry was a strange lot. There
was, for example, that Angevin queen who got annoyed with Mass one day and,
taking her children’s hands, levitated and flew out through an open window.
Matilda went to war against Stephen. It lasted through most
of his reign, and what with rival armies stripping the land of food, England’s
population shrunk by a third in that time. It was finally resolved via the
Treaty of Wallingford, in which Matilda agreed to let Stephen be, and Stephen
agreed that upon his death, the crown would go to Henri Fitz-Empress, son of
Geoffrey and Matilda.
There was a prominent man named John Marshal who at first
supported Stephen, but later changed his allegiance to support Matilda. Stephen
laid siege to the Marshal castle, and through some process I don’t know (I am
writing this post from memory) Stephen ended up with custody of John’s five
year old son, William. Stephen had young William loaded into a catapult and
threatened to return him with the help of that device to his father. John exclaimed
that there was nothing special about the child and that in any case he (John)
had a hammer and anvils to make better ones.
This boy was to grow up into a rare and special man, and I
aim to comment on his later life soon.
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